I've been thinking about barns
lately. I don't know why. None of my people were farmers, at least as
far back as great-great anythings. I took my favorite barn photograph
when I was still in high school. It was the side of an old barn,
recently painted white, with a rooster in the only window. My father remembers this photography in color with the white barn and a red roost. When I left
photography, I did not keep track of my negatives. Now all that is left
is a poorly made print I made on RC paper. It is, and was, in black and white. Good black and white photographs can make you think you are seeing colors,

I
was recently at an antique mall. One of the booths featured items made
from old, weathered barn boards. In the center of the booth as a color photograph
of the aging, leaning barn just before it was dismantled to make picture
frames. end tables, some faux-folk art Adirondack-style chairs. All of
them shitty. They should have burned the barn and saved it from such
indignity.

I named this
shot Barley House because the word barn is from the Old English, meaning
barley house. It is interesting that today barn has two main meanings.
One is "A large farm building used for storing grain, hay, or straw or
for housing livestock." The other is much more interesting and yet
somehow related, "A unit of area...used especially in particle physics."

Finally,
I'm not a big DeLillo fan, but I am fond of this: “What was the barn
like before it was photographed?' he said. 'What did
it look like, how was it different from other barns, how was it similar
to other barns? We can't answer these questions because we've read the
signs, seen the people snapping the pictures. We can't get outside the
aura. We're part of the aura. We're here, we're now.”-- White Noise